Stan Bates, the CEO of FourWinds Logistics, the fracking sand company which quickly turned into a Ponzi scheme, today was sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Bates headed the company which hired State Senator Carlos Uresti as attorney and pitch man. Uresti's involvement in the fraud ruined the prominent lawmaker's career.
He is facing 12 years in prison, he has surrendered his law license and resigned from the Texas Legislature.
Testimony indicated that Bates managed a company which was straight out of the Leonardo DiCaprio movie 'Wolf of Wall Street,' with drinking binges in the executive suite, cocaine delivered to the company's offices, and hookers being flown in from Las Vegas.
Bates tried to blame Uresti for the company's problems.
Several people who lost up to $6 million investing in FourWinds urged U.S. District Judge David Ezra to give Bates a maximum sentence.
Testimony said while FourWinds started as a legitimate company, when the fracking business began to sour with the collapse of oil prices in 2014, it turned into a massive fraud, going so far as the 'photoshop' pictures of train cars full of fracking sand and bank statements showing healthy balances, when in reality FourWinds had little money in the bank and had no sand to sell to fracking firms.